Pseudoscience plagues the health of our nation

Many baby boomers, who were spared leg braces and iron lungs thanks to polio vaccines, were the first to eschew immunizations for their own children as part of a back-to-nature movement. Today, children of the boomers are following a similar road.

Encouraged by the admonitions of celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, they subscribe to the theory that childhood vaccinations can lead to autism, despite scientists' adamant repudiation of the only study to ever link the two and the recent finding that the study was a fraud.

Celebrity-endorsed pseudoscience has gained credibility via Internet websites and interactive media, with pollsters now reporting that four in 10 parents believe vaccinations cause childhood autism and other illnesses.

These beliefs have led many parents to forgo immunizing their children, directly contributing to California's worst whooping cough epidemic in 63 years and other outbreaks of preventable diseases. Distrust of science and scientists threatens more than the health of our children; it poses a serious threat to the future health and well-being of our nation.

Our dilemma lies in the fact that vast segments of the population lack scientific literacy, not fully understanding scientific principles and methodology. Rather than consult scientific professionals for expert medical advice, they increasingly place their faith in pseudoscience, with its unsupported and untestable claims. Today, outright distrust of science is common.

Those of us who have devoted our lives to scientific discovery and medical progress have been shouted down by vocal critics of everything from evolution to animal models of human biology. This backlash against science threatens to bring the march of progress in fighting disease to a standstill and undermines public support for research that has been on the rise since the end of World War II.

Despite a substantial increase of new discoveries, technologies and medical breakthroughs, scientific illiteracy is on a parallel trajectory. In regularly conducted interviews over the past decade, a number of surveys have established some shocking trends.

Roughly 50 percent of Americans polled believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. Scientists put its age at more than 4.5 billion years. Forty percent of those surveyed believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted on Earth, despite the 65 million-year gap shown by the fossil record. When asked to name a living scientist, 46 percent were unable to name even one. Of those who did, the top three were Bill Gates, Al Gore and Albert Einstein, who died in 1955.

Ridicule of researchers and clinicians has been used as a vehicle for political advantage, contributing to the public denigration of science and medicine.

In the 2008 presidential election, Sarah Palin criticized federal funding for research using fruit flies as having "little to do with the public good." She may or may not have been aware that research using fruit flies has yielded huge conceptual breakthroughs in biology and medicine - and five Nobel Prizes.

Capitalizing on the distrust of science has been a convenient approach for promoting fundamentalist agendas. Whereas in the past scientists were heavily involved in writing textbooks, school boards from Texas to Pennsylvania are making concerted efforts to keep scientists out and turn over the process to religiously motivated, politically powerful movements.

Television only adds to the problem. There is only one minute of coverage of science and technology for every five hours of cable news, compared to 10 minutes for celebrities and entertainment, 12 minutes for accidents and disasters, and 26 minutes of crime reporting.

As citizens, we must therefore take it upon ourselves to increase our own knowledge of science and technology to make the best choices for our families and our society. We have to understand science to assess the safety of genetically modified foods or to evaluate the existence and consequences of global warming.

We must renew and reinvigorate our science education to ensure our children are fully educated in scientific methodology, are able to understand new discoveries and, ultimately, have the wherewithal to make educated decisions based on what can be substantiated and what cannot.

Those of us engaged in science, medicine and technology have to take our message to the people in every way possible, and with the volume turned way up.

It has to be made clear that science has molded and will continue to shape the world in which we live, to everyone's benefit. Failing to do so will enable the popular will - fueled by pseudoscience and vague, exaggerated and unverifiable claims - to strangle the financial support for the research and development that will lead to improved quality of life for us all.

David I. Meyer, Ph.D., is the president and CEO of Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.